Salmon Strongholds

The condition of salmon and steelhead populations across California has been an essential conservation topic since the 1920s. Up to the 1970s and early 1980s, focus was placed on many landbased, human practices—gold mining, river canaries, forestry practices, etc. As the century ended other issues arose— commercial harvest, water storage and conveyance, hatchery management, and rapid expansion of human populations. New federal and state statutes focused on protection of native species, when threatened or endangered with extinction, and within two decades, this protection was deemed necessary for the vast major of populations of Chinook and coho salmon and steelhead in California. The 1980s also saw the development of coastal restoration and in the 1990s, restoration in the Central Valley became a primary focus for fisheries and water agencies.

Statutory protection, and its associated recovery actions, and freshwater and estuarine habitat restoration were and are crucial programmatic strategies, both to ensure anadromous salmonids are maintained and regain recreational, tribal, and commercial fisheries in the ocean and inland waters. But two important developments reveal that current approaches are not sufficient— (1) improvements in science, especially the in ecology, hydrology, and geomorphology and what they tell us about functioning watersheds, land practices, and response of salmon and steelhead, and (2) restoring habitat and focusing on recovery of the most atrisk populations has not provided the anticipated and necessary results over the last 30 years.

A consequence of these developments is the fundamental concept of protecting and enhancing watersheds where ecological processes are highlyfunctioning, land practices are much in tune with the ecology of the watershed, fish populations are either stable or increasing, and human communities are dedicated to maintaining and improving conditions both terrestrially and aquatically.

California has the southern extent of three species of anadromous salmonids. This has significant genetic diversity and biological adaptation values. More importantly, what exists in California corresponds to species-wide and genus plasticity across the entire eastern Pacific region and essential ecological role of the salmonids in California waters. Given the rate of declining populations of salmonids, protecting the best populations and watersheds we have left in the State is a crucial component to overall conservation. With continuing human encroachment, ongoing struggles over water management, and growing knowledge and concern about what climate change may mean for aquatic ecosystems and species, the time has arrived to put as much emphasis on protecting and promoting salmonid strongholds as Californians dedicate to recovery and restoration.